Moderately priced general purpose micro-computers, i.e. PCs, have recently moved beyond their erstwhile roles as home financial and educational tools to become sophisticated multimedia entertainment systems and, with increasingly available Internet access, are poised to become an important forum for the direct home marketing of goods and services. In addition, games designed to be executed on PCs are rapidly overtaking games designed for specific game consoles such as Nintendo.RTM. and Sega Genesis.RTM.. These recent developments are influencing many people to install a computing base in their primary entertainment room, e.g. a living room or family room.
Both the PC and the television industry have responded to these developments by offering living room computing systems. The offerings by the PC industry reflect desire on the part of PC manufacturers to make inroads into the traditional domain of television makers. One such recently introduced PC system is the Destination.RTM. system offered by Gateway 2000, Inc. The Destination system is a high resolution, large screen PC which is optimized for use in locations where a TV receiver has traditionally been used. The Destination system incorporates a "high end," albeit conventional, PC having a high performance microprocessor, CD-ROM drive, sound and video processing cards, and disc storage drives and is equipped with a wireless pointing device (mouse) and an available wireless keyboard. In addition, the large screen monitor of the Destination system displays images at higher resolution than conventional large screen TV displays. Having these features, the Destination system permits users to operate a full function PC system and to browse Internet sites (i.e., to "websurf") from a sofa located within viewing range of the large screen PC system. In addition to the Destination system, the `Genius` system offered by Thomson Electronics has a similar construction and need not be described in further detail here.
Another recently developed PC system is the `Simply Interactive PC` (TM) reference specification adopted and advanced by Microsoft, Inc. for combination PC--television systems. Under that Specification, the PC generates a video display signal and converts it to a television scan format such as NTSC, to permit the display signal to be viewed on a television receiver. The Specification provides minimal standards for processor and memory capacity, but requires the system to include a modem and network protocol support to provide a basic Internet browsing function. Finally, the Specification requires the PC to have `instant on` operation; that is, the PC must appear to have no boot cycle from the viewpoint of the user when it is turned on.
The foregoing described Gateway Destination and Thomson Genius systems share a common disadvantage in that each of those systems is marketed as a high end (and consequently expensive) PC system to be used primarily in places (e.g. the living room or family room) where a less expensive TV receiver has traditionally been used. In the past, TV receivers and PCs have been used in the living room or family room primarily for children's oriented activities such as game-playing. Activities requiring greater concentration such as home financial management and word processing have traditionally been performed on a PC located away from the living room in a bedroom or home office. Since both up-to-date game applications and popular finance and word processing applications require relatively high end PC systems, users who wish to benefit from such applications must keep current by purchasing relatively high end PCs. Finally, since there is no reason to expect that users will choose to conduct all computing activities from a PC located in their living rooms, the new Destination and Genius systems would require a family to purchase two relatively high end systems in order to perform the full range of their traditional home computing activities. For these reasons, the new living room based PCs result in substantial added costs which ultimately limit their attractiveness.
The currently available alternative is also undesirable. Although systems which conform to the Simply Interactive PC specification reduce the cost of living room based computing, such systems represent substantial compromises in PC functionality and performance. There remains an unsatisfied need for a system which reduces the cost of PC computing performed in the living room without reducing the operational capabilities of such computing
The present invention fills this need by extending the user interface of a PC located in one location (such as a home office) to another location where a television (TV) receiver is located. The present invention extends the user interface by converting the PC generated video display signal to a scan format which can be displayed on the TV receiver and transmitting the video display signal and/or PC generated audio signals from the PC location to the TV receiver location. The interface extender system also incorporates a device located at the TV receiver which receives user command and pointing device input data and couples that input data to the PC via an available radio frequency transmission channel which may be wireless or utilize existing wiring such as the AC wiring within a house.
The present invention is not without its antecedents. U.S. Pat. No. 3,618,035 shows a system in which the output of a computer 150 (FIG. 1) is connected to a data translator and synchronizer 134 such that video signals are transmitted via a switching system 130 to a "standard video-telephone station" (e.g., subscriber station 100a) having a video display screen 112. A subscriber located at the video-telephone station uses a light pen 122 to transmit control signals to the computer 150 and thereby control what he sees on the display.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,569,617 shows a system in which a time-sharing computer 10 (FIG. 1) is coupled via a data interpreter 20 to a scan converter 31 which in turn is coupled to a video signal distributor 32 which records video output signals corresponding to respective users' time-shares on a video disk 33. Information stored on video disk 33 is then transmitted to a plurality of conventional television receivers 60 for viewing by each user. As in U.S. Pat. No. 3,618,035, described above, users located at the television receivers use a light pen 40 to interact with the displayed video and transmit control signals back to the computer 10.
The systems taught in the above-described '035 and '617 Patents, while permitting user input to be transmitted to the computer from the location of a remote computer, fall short of extending the user interface of a computer system, especially a PC, in substantially unaltered condition to permit a user at a TV receiver to effect substantially the same level of control over the PC as when the user is at the PC location.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to extend the user interface of a PC from the location of said PC to the location of a television (TV) receiver remote from said PC.
It is another object of the invention to provide a system which couples command and pointing device input data generated at a remote video display (e.g. TV receiver) location to a PC in an input format recognized by the PC.
A further object of the invention is to provide control over the operations of a PC from the location of a remote TV receiver by transmitting PC recognized input data over a wireless transmission medium or over available parallel conductor or twisted pair conductor transmission lines.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a low cost and easily managed transmission channel for transmitting a full motion PC display and PC generated audio signals from the PC to the remote location of a TV.
Still another object of the invention is to provide utilization of and control over a PC from a remote location by launching a multiple instruction program from the remote location which provides macro-level control over PC.
Another object of the invention is to provide a system which multiplies the user interface of a PC to provide multiple simultaneous interactive sessions on such PC which are controlled independently by users located at each of a plurality of video displays.
Still another object of the invention is to permit a television transmission to be viewed in conjunction with related PC generated display and/or audio signals by extracting an embedded address from the TV transmission and accessing related data through the extracted address for generating the related display and/or audio signal by the PC.